Resilience of early childhood educators: navigating the implementation of the Merdeka Curriculum in Indonesia’s border with Timor Leste

The Merdeka Curriculum represents a major shift in Indonesia’s early childhood education system by positioning teachers as autonomous curriculum agents responsible for strengthening foundational literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional development. Its implementation in remote border areas of East Nusa Tenggara, particularly on Timor Island bordering Timor-Leste, is constrained by limited infrastructure, insufficient training, and weak institutional support. This study explores the lived experiences of 15 early childhood educators working in underdeveloped, frontier, and outermost regions, most of whom are non-permanent teachers with limited formal qualifications. Using a qualitative phenomenological design with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings show that teacher resilience is sustained through intrinsic motivation, spiritual-moral commitment, community support, and culturally embedded coping strategies. In this marginal context, resilience emerges as a socially grounded process rooted in vocation, faith, and collective responsibility. The study conceptualizes resilience as a context-sensitive resource enabling curriculum reform under structural deprivation in remote early childhood settings.